Re: how long before fuel cell cars make an impact?
There is an outside chance hydrogen fuel cells will have a market segment in 30 to 50 years. Fuel cells have the potential advantage of avoiding some of the losses in electric transmission, battery charging and discharging. The enabling technology is to create hydrogen by electrolysis much more efficiently than current processes. The best approach seems to be to run the electrolysis at very high temperatures and the only candidate now is purpose built, high temperature nuclear reactors. The infrastructure for this would take years and it's not clear it would have a big advantage over battery systems.
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